


A Bench at Midnight

by nb_vint



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, liminal space
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 18:52:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11973528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nb_vint/pseuds/nb_vint
Summary: "Without the safety net of certainty, the weight of hope lingers heavy in the air between them. He wants forever, but Gabriel knows that this bench at midnight isn't the start of that. It's a moment between times, maybe. A gateway to that morning when he wakes up and starts the day with forever in mind."A liminal space AU for Gabriel and Jack.





	A Bench at Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thank you to Gray for being the best beta a person could hope for.
> 
> This is a love letter to R76, honestly.

Gabriel Reyes was a simple man, used to the security of military training and its rigid schedules. Eat at this time, train for this long, regulate your sleep. Unless nightmares kept you up of course, or the weight of responsibility bore down on you in the silence of the night in a way that made sleep impossible. No cure for that as long as he kept placating the psych. "Yes, I'm fine. Yes, I'm sleeping well. No, military life has not fucked me up in a way that would only get me discharged if you knew."

So, this. The calming sound of moths killing themselves against street lights, the welcoming glow of a far off corner store giving you peace for another hour or two. A detour through the park to that one bench that always feels a little warm, too much like comfort in the stillness of midnight. 

Gabriel had been coming to this same bench like clockwork over the last few weeks since his last deployment came to an end. A bench like any other, save for the heart carved into its side bearing the initials "R + S." The sentimental side of him wonders at the two people that took the time to cement their love on a park bench. Were they still in love? Had they ever been?

Fool thoughts that were safe so late at night. In the loneliness of the park, it was easy to contemplate forever when it seemed like you were the last person on earth.

The sound of steps on the pavement. The hazy outline of a figure coming out of the gloom into the light of the lamp above them. Maybe not the last, then. 

The problem, or maybe the blessing, with benches like this was the ability to shut out the world beyond it. As far as Gabriel was concerned, he was the last man on Earth as long as no one disturbed the sanctity of the single lamp, the quiet stillness, and the sound of his jeans on the wood of this bench at midnight. 

"Oh, hello."

The surprise in the man's voice is confusing. Gabriel had been coming to this bench for weeks. By the rules of finder’s keepers, Gabriel should be the one surprised.

The stranger was the ordinary type. Drew the eye when the light hit his hair, or the cut of his jaw was too sharp to ignore. Ordinary in the sense that he was a good ol’ American boy with the blonde hair and blue eyes that would make a weaker man swoon. Gabriel liked to think he wasn’t a weaker man. 

A second’s hesitation to show a cultivated suspicion. “Hello.” Not too unfriendly, really, but not necessarily welcoming. 

Gabriel got sick of his own shit sometimes, too. 

For all that a relatively dark corner in a deserted park would scream unwelcome to anyone, it didn’t seem to deter Gabriel’s apparent companion for the night. The stranger sat. The scratch of jeans on wood, the stranger’s heavy sigh as the tension eased out of his shoulders. As if this place was familiar to him, as if the tensions of the day could only be released at this place and at this time.

Gabriel swore this was the first time he had seen him in all these weeks, and for all intents and purposes, this stranger was basically getting comfortable in Gabriel’s living room. Maybe he’d gotten too attached to this bench at midnight. Probably ridiculous, but the sound of jeans on wood was as familiar to Gabriel as his own breathing at this point.

“You come here often?” The stranger’s cringe at the end of his sentence was almost as pointed as Gabriel’s own scoff at the line.

“More or less.” What the fuck did that even mean?

The stranger’s nodding acceptance of that should make Gabriel feel awkward. He's never been one to fill the silence even when both parties are aching for something to get rid of the discomfort, but it's this bench. There's no way to feel uncomfortable here so the silence stretches, and they let it.

“Jack,” breaks it. A name thrown out into the void beyond their light and their bench (his bench, Gabriel corrects).

“Huh?”

“My name. Jack. I thought if you decided to come back, you might as well know my name.”

\-------------------------------------------------- 

“Maybe it’s like that. You step through a doorway and find yourself somewhere different than you thought.”

“If you’re trying to convince me we’re in Narnia, I’m expecting you to grow goat feet.”

“Oh come on, you’ve never felt something close to this? The light shifts in your living room and suddenly it doesn’t feel like home. Or you’re walking in a place you’ve never been and you swear it’s an old haunt. I’m serious, I don’t think this is so weird.”

Gabriel contemplated this with the intense and shifting expressions of a man reconfiguring his view of the world around him.

“If I told you I believed you, where would that leave us?”

“On separate ends of a park bench.”

“At midnight.”

Jack nodded. “At midnight.”

A moment to think, just enough for Gabriel to know that he hadn't doubted it in the first place. 

“Well go on then, tell me something,” Jack says, as if he could tell him the sum of his parts right here under their lone light.

“What?”

“If this park bench is anything, it's a moment for us, so tell me something.”

“Like what?”

“Oh come on Gabriel, have some imagination. Tell me your fears, your hopes, let's make pillow talk.”

Gabriel smiles. Thinks he would've blushed if Jack didn't feel as familiar to him as he did. As if he'd been waking up to his face beside him all his life.

“Alright. Pillow talk, I can do that. My hope is for that, you know? Being able to wake up and see someone worth spending time with. Want to get up in the morning planning not only the day, but forever.”

If he takes a glance at Jack with too much focus, he’ll blame it on the light. Not on how pillow talk will always be doused in the memory of him on this park bench at midnight. Someone he could've planned forever with. It was sad.

_I’ll get over it._

Sure.

“That's something good to look forward to.” Jack leans forward, hands clutched to the fabric on his knees.

“Yeah.”

\--------------------------------------------------

Killing time was always one of those idioms that seemed to stick with Gabriel. How was it killed, exactly? Could you maim it? Shatter it into little pieces in hopes of rearranging it in what way best suited you?

This bench was made for insensible thoughts.

But that was the point wasn't it? Questions without end, time meant to be killed, a boy with a tendency to be at the right place at the right....

“Moment” would fit better, Gabriel thought. A hodgepodge of moments cobbled together on a bench at midnight. No sounds other than the slight scratch of jeans on old wood and the hitch in Jack’s breath before he spoke his mind.

"I think the worst part would be waking up and realizing I dreamt you. That this wasn't real."

"Definitely the bad route," Gabriel replies, nodding with an exaggerated motion.

Jack's look of grievance seems more, "what am I going to do with you" than "stop making light of my feelings" but just to make sure, Gabriel grabs hold of Jack's hand.

He's never been one to shy away from overt shows of affection, but he's never actually attempted this with someone before. A bench at midnight would be the first and last of it, he thinks suddenly. It should be sad to imagine an existence alone, spent pining for a man on another end of a park bench, but for all the stillness of the night and the sense of suspended disbelief, hope is tied up in there somewhere.

"What can I do to make this real for you? I'm not saying tomorrow we'll wake up and know for sure whether this was our reality, but I can tell you that I'll wake up knowing that meeting you was the best thing that's ever happened to me. Real or not."

Jack's smile and tightened grasp makes Gabriel glad for his bared heart. Slapped onto his sleeve and ready for the taking, he has faith in the fact that the universe wouldn't be so cruel as to place Jack on this park bench at midnight without some kind of resolution in mind.

Maybe.

Hopefully.

He’s invested too much time and dollar store credibility on bad scifi and worse romance, probably.

So he learned when to wake when he’s told, when to sleep when he’s told, but no one told him to hold Jack’s hand and he’s here on this bench at midnight anyways. The scratch of Jack’s jeans on wood and the stillness of the night and a moment in time that will end the moment they both get up. Gabriel knows this. 

“Your number.”

“Hm?”

“Give me your number. If we wake up tomorrow and the ink hasn't disappeared, or the numbers aren't somehow insensible, what could be realer than that?”

Jack’s fluctuations between hopeful smile and self preservatory cynicism is a good look for him.

“What if I dial and no one picks up?”

If Gabriel’s learned anything from romance novels, it's that the two people will always either end up together or the main character ends up with the helpful best friend. Unless Gabriel is ready and willing to give up on Jack for the helpful bench they’re sitting on, their fifty fifty chance turns more certain by the second.

“I'll sleep with my phone by my ear. I won't miss your call.”

“What if it's not that easy?”

“You walked off the streets of your city and ended up on this park bench at midnight. I had trouble sleeping and did the same. I'm not one to put much faith in coincidences, so as far as I'm concerned, we’ve already gotten past the hard part.”

For all that Jack was the first to give voice to their circumstance and give his I Want to Believe speech, his timidity in believing that the good they'd found in one another could be woken up to tomorrow made Gabriel want to take the burden of hoping enough for the both of them.

Patting down the pockets of his jeans and thanking his lucky stars for the practical sense to always have a pen in reach, Gabriel presents both the pen and his arm to Jack. Jack takes it. A cool touch and a steady hand, Jack carefully writes his number. He stares down at it for a second longer, making sure the ink dries before letting go. 

“There, see? I can read it just fine,” Gabriel says as he traces the numbers. He doesn't recognize the area code.

Without the safety net of certainty, the weight of hope lingers heavy in the air between them. He wants forever, but Gabriel knows that this bench at midnight isn't the start of that. It's a moment between times, maybe. A gateway to that morning when he wakes up and starts the day with forever in mind. 

Gabriel puts the pen back in his pocket, drags a hand through the dried ink on his arm, and stands up. The shadow he casts on the sidewalk doesn't much look like him, too bizarre to be anything but a product of this night.

Turning to look at Jack, he tries to cement the image in his head. Not because he'd given up on bearing the weight, but more for the sake of preserving the moment.

“So I guess we’ll see, right?” Jack and his worries, all spilled out into the air between them. 

“I guess we’ll see.” He thinks of winking, or finger gunning his way out, lightening the moment in the way “you come here often?” only could have. Giving up on the hope for opportune levity, he smiles at Jack before turning his back to the bench at midnight.

“But Jack, I'll see you around.”

**Author's Note:**

> Talk to me about Overwatch on twitter, @tevintergods


End file.
